Once more unto the breach

The most powerful speech counts for naught if no one hears it

Image: mimus polyglottos, common name ‘mockingbird’. The Latin name means ‘many-tongued mimic’

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll have seen two articles from me in quick succession on the matter of US expansionism in general and Greenland in particular. I don’t know if you thought they were any good: three people liked the first one and four the second. Quite a lot of people have read one or the other or both, but didn’t express any view on them, if they even had one. Often it occurs to me to write something and, as the ideas buzz around my head, I already abandon the idea, because it brings together too many strands, from sources that are too distant, so that even I cannot fully follow and therefore I could never really expect anyone else to follow, let alone have the patience to trudge through, my molasses-like logic.

A fellow Substacker just wrote this in an article about Tucker Carlson, however, and it gave me pause for thought:

The most powerful speech counts for naught if no one hears it.

And the thought it gave me pause for was this: Is that true?

Here is a powerful speech:

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!

Follow your spirit; and upon this charge,
Cry ‘God for Harry! England! and Saint George!’

Between these two couplets lie 30 lines of speech. Can you cite one of them?¹ What play is the monologue taken from? Okay, who wrote it? And who speaks it (the clue’s in the title of the play)? And, finally, who heard it?

Of course, on 25 October 1415, had Henry V said these exact words, about 8,000 would have heard it. It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that, in the 400 years since the words were written by William Shakespeare, millions of people have heard them. It is not a speech that counts for naught, and yet it is a speech that urges to battle. It is belligerent and bellicose and nationalistic and violent. And people love it.

Here’s a second powerful speech:

Hey, Mr Cunningham. Hey, Mr Cunningham, how’s your entailment gettin’ along? Don’t you remember me, Mr Cunningham? I’m Jean Louise Finch. You brought us some hickory nuts one time, remember? I go to school with Walter. He’s your boy? Ain’t he, sir? He’s in my grade and he does right well. He’s a good boy, a real nice boy. We brought him home for dinner one time. Maybe he told you about me, I beat him up one time but he was real nice about it. Tell him hey for me, won’t you? Entailments are bad. Well, Atticus, I was just sayin’ to Mr Cunningham that entailments are bad an’ all that, but you said not to worry, it takes a long time sometimes … that you all’d ride it out together. What’s the matter?

So, you literary geniuses, what book is that from? Who speaks these words, and to whom? And what follows them?

The book is To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The words are spoken by Scout Finch. And what immediately follows them is the following text:

‘I’ll tell him you said hey, little lady,’ he said.

Then he straightened up and waved a big paw. ‘Let’s clear out,’ he called. ‘Let’s get going, boys.’

Those words are spoken by Mr Cunningham, who, along with a group of hostile accomplices, has been dissuaded from committing a criminal act, lynching the prisoner whom Scout’s father is protecting, by the simple kind words of Scout herself.

To Kill A Mockingbird is hailed as one of the finest pieces of American literature of the 20th century. It was first published in 1960. My own copy was published in 1974 and bears on its cover the text: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Over 15,000,000 copies sold.

It is therefore safe to say that the speech cited above has been read by at least 15,000,000 people and, because the book was filmed, has been heard by countless more. But the question has to be: how many real lynchings did it prevent? And, if we return to King Henry V for a second, how many battles did Shakespeare’s words incite?

Here is where I feel daunted by the scope of the task I have set myself: to persuade you that from little acorns do mighty oaks grow. Our world was at one time a lifeless rock hurtling through the universal void. Out of some miracle of chemical composition and coincidence came the first spark of life: anaerobic amoebae, out of which have developed the multiplicity of species that we today call life on Earth. That simple fact alone disproves King Lear, by proving that out of nothing can indeed come much. And whether that nothing is a lump of rock or the disjointed utterances of a ten-year-old child, or the valiant rousing address of a king to his troops, or the molasses-like logic of a blogger, it remains the case that, if the conditions are propitious, and the circumstances meet and right, then a speech heard by but one ear can nonetheless wreak great change, if only in the course of time.

I do not write these columns in order to be widely read. I write them in order to write. To set in words the things that occur to me as I clamber up, or down, if you like, the endless chain upon which I happen to find myself. I know how to write what will probably be swept along by the main stream: all I need to do for that is to read and assimilate the main stream. Perhaps I could do so whilst writing inspiring words, words that carry the reader and listener along in their undertow. But, would they be my words, then?

Here’s the last of my speech examples:

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

We are no longer in the realm of fiction. It’s the Inaugural Speech given by John F. Kennedy, President of the United States of America, on 20 January 1961. This is a real speech, given by a real man, to real people. And yet, I must ask you: are these words any more founded in reality than the words of Henry V or of Scout Finch?

The words were spoken nine months before I was born. When I was old enough to read and understand them, I was inspired. Not only by the words themselves, but by the fact that you can view the murder of the man who spoke them as being a direct consequence of his having spoken them.

We do that. We hear or read words that inspire us, and then we click away, or turn the page, because, in the end, words mean nothing. We will be inspired by the words we agree with, and we will rail against those we oppose. Monbiot’s first law of journalism. So, in accordance with Monbiot, how much must I dilute my message before a wide panoply of listeners will give ear to my speech? And by how far must I dilute it before it will then be acted upon? A speech that is any longer than an Internet meme is unlikely to be agreed with in whole, very unlikely to be remembered in whole, and extremely unlikely to be acted upon, unless it accord entirely with the sentiments of the listener. And that is even to suppose that it accords entirely with the sentiments of the speaker.

So, is my fellow Substacker right? Does the most powerful speech count for naught if no one hears it? No. No, he’s wrong. Many a powerful speech, heard by many people, counts for naught unless it be acted upon. And no powerful speech that no one hears counts for naught, if only because, even if it was heard by none, it was spoken by one. From that little acorn can yet a mighty oak grow.

1. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man,
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger:
Stiffen the sinews, conjure up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage:
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let it pry through the portage of the head,
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide;
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English,
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought,
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument.
Dishonour not your mothers: now attest,
That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture: let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit; and upon this charge,
Cry ‘God for Harry! England! and Saint George!’